White cliffs

Home and away

View above Limantour Estero, Point Reyes National Seashore

If the West in American lore symbolises wilderness, the wild at heart, and the untamed part of our nature, then one of its finest manifestations is the Point Reyes peninsula at the far western reaches of Marin County, California, just north of San Francisco.

The triangular peninsula sticks far out into the Pacific Ocean, creating a slightly sheltered south-facing bay, briefly interrupting the southward trending ocean currents. The winds here blow constantly as part of their long journey across the Pacific, coming from Russia across the Bering strait, around the southern coasts of Alaska, the west coast of British Columbia, and down along the States of Washington and Oregon before they get to the 1,100 mile long coast of California.

Point Reyes National Park and Golden Gate National Recreation Area, left. In context within Northern California, right. Maps from Google Maps

In addition to the wind and foggy damp weather that is particularly characteristic of this peninsula, it is also the beneficiary of the San Andreas Fault that creates the distinct Eastern boundary forming the long hypotenuse of the peninsula’s triangular shape. There has been sufficient movement along the fault that there are distinctly different geologic types on either side of the fault. Some of the rock formations in Point Reyes likely originated in Tehachapi, over 300 miles south, just north of the Los Angeles basin.¹

The limited trees that have persisted on the ridges here bow and shape to the consistent pulsing wind. More common are extensive grasslands and short scrubby chaparral bushes. Many of the hollows and ravines are well forested, and these provided good locations for the indigenous Miwok tribe to thrive in the area until the Spanish missionaries arrived in the early 1800s. Since that time there has been minimal human settlement, with the few settlers focusing on dairy and cattle grazing, and more recently commercial oyster harvesting.

Olema Valley, Point Reyes

The very southern tip of the peninsula just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco was reserved as military land for some time, as it offered a prime place for watching potential incoming adversaries from the Pacific Ocean. All this land now belongs to either the Point Reyes National Seashore or the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, with limited permission for the ranchers and growers to continue to operate.

This vast amount of land so close to a major city has always been a truly wild place. Growing up a few miles away meant it was an endless playground for me and my friends. Besides weekend camping trips, hiking miles and miles of woodland trails, and spending endless hours at long sandy beaches, we also learned to identify and spot many species of the abundant native and migrating wildlife. We searched out resident birds such as the great blue and night herons, snowy egrets, and cheered for the return of graceful brown pelicans. The pelicans reestablished their territories after decades of decimation from the use of the agricultural chemical DDT, now thankfully banned, which caused their eggshells to break prematurely and the chicks to die.

Night Heron, Tomales Bay

After abundant rainfall we watched for the annual silver salmon and steelhead trout returning to spawn. I learned to fish for (and return) assorted spotted leopard sharks, manta rays and other marine life in Bolinas Lagoon. When camping in the woods near the beach we always hoped to see the elusive pale Tule Elk appearing like shadows in the fog that often shrouded the landscape at dusk.

But the most thrilling activity in later years was going out to the lighthouse in January to look for migrating Grey whales. January through March, the mothers and their new calves make the long trek north from warm waters of Mexico all the way up to the nutrient rich waters around Alaska. As the point of Point Reyes jutted out into the Ocean, the whales tended to come close to the tip as they swam around it. That made it a prime spot for seeing (and hearing! ) the whoosh of the spouting whales. Since Grey whale hunting was banned in 1938, there has been a resurgence of the grey whale population, and we could almost be guaranteed a sighting if we made the long trek to the lighthouse.

Such was my connection to the area that I chose to study Point Reyes for my honours thesis to qualify for my undergraduate degree in Geography. As I was at University just across the Bay in Berkeley, it was easy to make field visits for my research. After graduation I continued the treks to Point Reyes with new friends and visiting family to share my beloved wilderness.

One of my longtime friends has the same summer birthday as me, and over the years we celebrated many of our birthdays at beaches in Point Reyes, risking the variety of weathers we encountered, knowing there was always a dune behind which we could shelter from the wind if necessary. For so many of those and other parties, one person would be in charge of getting a bushel of locally harvested oysters on the way to the beach, while others would bring dipping sauces, sourdough bread, barbecue supplies, and random salads and desserts to go with lots of local Napa or Sonoma white wine. We’d play volleyball or soccer in the sand while the oysters cooked, or the brave would down them raw. The vastness of the sandy beaches, the company of close friends, the plentiful local food and wine were all the joy we needed.

Scenes from various location within the Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Most photos in this post are from late 1970s and badly reproduced here.

One time I was taken along as a chaperone on a good friend’s first date to go whale watching at the Point Reyes Lighthouse. (That was not the trip where it was so blowy at the lighthouse that one of my contact lenses blew right out of my eye!) I’m happy to say the couple got along fine, went on many more dates, got married, and many decades later we are still best of friends. See, Point Reyes is a powerful place!

But others have stories about Point Reyes too. The first inhabitants, the Miwok, lived here thousands of years before European explorers arrived and eventually stayed to settle. One of the earliest European explorers alleged to visit was the Englishman Sir Francis Drake, in 1579. His ship needed repairs and they stayed in what we now call Drakes Bay for about 5 weeks. In the usual way of the time since there were no other Europeans around, Drake claimed the land for England, and for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. He named it Nova Albion, referencing the white cliffs, and therefore it’s affinity with his own country. Albion was an ancient term for Great Britain, derived from the Latin ‘albus’ for white, alluding to the white cliffs.²

There are several reasons including actual data for why it is believed he landed at what we now call Drakes Bay. But of course the most charismatic is that the white cliffs of Point Reyes reminded him of the White Cliffs of Dover in Southern England.

Photo of Point Reyes by Yana Marudova on Unsplash

But what brings this all into a full circle for me is that Sir Francis Drake lived in a grand house near Plymouth UK, which is where I moved when I first relocated to the UK and where we lived for 12 years. After many of those years we visited his grand house, now in care of the National Trust. This house was purchased with some of the money Drake gained from his marauding up and down the Americas. And there, as I’ve mentioned before (here), I found a case holding a few of the treasures brought back from his time spent with the Miwok in Point Reyes. With shivers, I felt the connection to a small piece of my beloved wild landscape.

The spirit of Point Reyes nestled inside me turns out lives down the road to the west in Plymouth. And in another lovely turn of events, my writerly friend Rebecca Holden wrote last week (linked here) about the lovely white cliffs of Dover, reminding me that if I turn around and look the other direction, east, there I can find those exact white cliffs that inspired Sir Francis to name my beloved wilderness Nova Abion. My childhood connection to a wild land that includes dramatic coastal white cliffs is still with me, albeit in another location (and without brown pelicans and migrating grey whales).

I’m reminded that even if sometimes you feel far from home, home is likely tucked inside you all along, and you need only a small jostle of memory; a photo, a smell of salt spray, or even a slant of shimmery light, and it all comes right back to you again.

My “local” UK white cliffs; not THE white cliffs, but closely related.

Thank you everyone for reading today! I hope you don’t mind my indulgence in a landscape that means so much to me, and where I was able to spend a few hours in my memories, writing this for you.

Let me know if you have favourite landscapes, either ones where you grew up, and/or the ones that are meaningful to you now, for any reason. I’d love to hear!

Wishing you a joyful week ahead!

xoxo Sabrina

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1. https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/nature/geologicactivity.htm

2. The history I have referenced about Sir Francis Drake comes from several sources, including": https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/historyculture/people_europeanexplorers.htm; https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/devon/buckland-abbey/history-of-buckland-abbey; https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/parks/pt_reyes.php; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Cliffs_of_Dover; and the book “Sir Francis Drake, Behind the Pirate’s Mask” by Andrew Norman, 2004, Halsgrove.

You might also enjoy the following quotations I found particularly apt at describing Sir Francis Drake and also the charismatic White cliffs:

“After a two-year campaign pillaging towns and capturing Spanish treasure ships along the coast of South America, Drake headed north. He landed at Drakes Bay in 1579 with his last remaining ship, the Golden Hind, and stayed for a period of time to make repairs, prior to continuing with his mission to circumnavigate the earth. What had initially proved so inviting to Drake were the cliffs at Point Reyes, which apparently reminded Drake of the famed White Cliffs of Dover on the southeastern coast of England.” from: https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/parks/pt_reyes.php

“The house was later sold to Sir Francis Drake – Elizabethan Hero, Sea Captain, Privateer and Slave Trader. He was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe and was able to purchase Buckland Abbey using a fraction of the treasure from the voyage. His later role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 cemented his fame.” from https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/devon/buckland-abbey/history-of-buckland-abbey

“The cliffs have great symbolic value in Britain because they face towards continental Europe across the narrowest part of the English Channel (approximately 20 miles (32 km) between coasts), where invasions have historically threatened and against which the cliffs form a symbolic guard. The National Trust calls the cliffs "an icon of Britain", with "the white chalk face a symbol of home and wartime defence."Because crossing at Dover was the primary route to the continent before the advent of air travel, the white line of cliffs also formed the first or last sight of Britain for travellers. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Cliffs_of_Dover